Synapse v0.30.0 released today!

It's release o'clock - GDPR time!!!!

v0.30.0 sees the introduction of Server Notices, which provides a channel whereby server administrators can send messages to users on the server, as well as Consent Management for tracking whether users have agreed to the terms and conditions set by the administrator of a server - and blocking access to the server until they have.

In conjunction these features support GDPR compliance in the form of providing a client agnostic means to contact users and ask for consent/agreement to a Privacy Notice.

For more information about our approach to GDPR compliance take a look here (although be aware that our position has evolved a bit; see the upcoming new privacy policy for the Matrix.org homeserver for details).

Additionally there are a host of bug fixes and refactors as well as an enhancement to our Dockerfile.

Get it now from https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/releases/tag/v0.30.0

Changes in synapse v0.30.0 (2018-05-24)

'Server Notices' are a new feature introduced in Synapse 0.30. They provide a channel whereby server administrators can send messages to users on the server.

They are used as part of communication of the server policies (see Consent Tracking), however the intention is that they may also find a use for features such as "Message of the day".

This feature is specific to Synapse, but uses standard Matrix communication mechanisms, so should work with any Matrix client. For more details see here. 

Further Server Notices/Consent Tracking Support:

• Allow overriding the server_notices user's avatar (PR #3273)
• Use the localpart in the consent uri (PR #3272)
• Support for putting %(consent_uri)s in messages (PR #3271)
• Block attempts to send server notices to remote users (PR #3270)
• Docs on consent bits (PR #3268)

Changes in synapse v0.30.0-rc1 (2018-05-23)

GDPR Support:

• ConsentResource to gather policy consent from users (PR #3213)
• Move RoomCreationHandler out of synapse.handlers.Handlers (PR #3225)
• Infrastructure for a server notices room (PR #3232)
• Send users a server notice about consent (PR #3236)
• Reject attempts to send event before privacy consent is given (PR #3257)
• Add a 'has_consented' template var to consent forms (PR #3262)
• Fix dependency on jinja2 (PR #3263)

Features:

• Cohort analytics (PR #3163, #3241, #3251)
• Add lxml to docker image for web previews (PR #3239) Thanks to @ptman!
• Add in flight request metrics (PR #3252)

Changes:

• Remove unused update_external_syncs (PR #3233)
• Use stream rather depth ordering for push actions (PR #3212)
• Make purge_history operate on tokens (PR #3221)
• Don't support limitless pagination (PR #3265)

Bug Fixes:

• Fix logcontext resource usage tracking (PR #3258)
• Fix error in handling receipts (PR #3235)
• Stop the transaction cache caching failures (PR #3255)